Organized Drawers

When you’ve got a whole room — or entire house — that needs organizing, sometimes it’s easier to break the task into smaller, more doable projects. Instead of trying to get the bathroom completely organized, just start with the medicine cabinet or the linen closet. Similarly, you could tackle one drawer in your home or one small area.

We’ve got portions of our house that are “semi-organized” but still need help. I consider the semi-organized area to be, for example, a drawer where most of what belongs there is contained there, but in a not-so-organized way. Case in point, a drawer in our wet bar.

We’ve got bar/kitchen items (margarita salt, our wine bottle opener, beverage napkins, napkin rings, shot glasses and my gold silverware) in there, but they are all piled in randomly. I took everything out and sorted it into categories.

My organization solution was the expandable plastic storage divider ($17 from The Container Store). It’s important to measure your drawer before going out and purchasing new organization items. Lucky for me, the length of this one fit the drawer perfectly. (I could have found a prettier divider or lined the bottom of this one with pretty paper or painted it, but for now, I just wanted a quick solution).

If you are starting small don’t worry about prettying up your organizational things for now, just get the “stuff” organized first.

Ah, so much better!

BUT, not everything that was in the drawer previously belonged there, so when I was done, I was left with some miscellaneous items. We’ve got cords to who-knows-what, party favors, take out menus, etc.

These “left over” items are inevitable in most organization projects and can end up preventing you from tackling the chore in the first place.

Let’s face it- it’s great to have one drawer organized, but then you have another pile of stuff to organize! Of course, it helps to have other areas in your home where those things go, and then you simply but them there. If not, you have to CREATE a home for those things. Does that happen when you start organizing things too?

We having been living semi organized for awhile, and everything has a "place" but it is sometimes just thrown there. I totally know what you mean by semi organized. Someday, I will definitely have real organized place for everything, and everything in that place 🙂

Oh my gosh, thanks for the much needed inspiration today. We moved into a new home last spring and when you move in, you put things were you think you may need them. And normally those needs change. Thanks to this post, I reorganized all my drawers this morning. So fresh and nice!

I love drawer organizers! I've done 3 drawers so far and the area underneath the kitchen cabinet. I'm currently on sabbatical but will return to my organizing job in the next several weeks! A girl deserves a break every now and then, right!? 😉

Looks great Megan! I need to tackle my desk drawer (I just opened it – ack! Haha :)) I started my 40 bags in 40 days purge this weekend with the storage closet in our basement and drawers are on my list! Yes, its amazing how random things end up in random places. It's so much better when everything has a home!

Oh – my tip – I stopped saving take-out menus. I've never had a problem looking up take-out menus online so I was glad to be rid of those papers! 🙂

Thanks for posting! I will have to get one of those expand a drawers for a really big drawer that's in my kitchen. I shared your project (and linked back to your post) on my blog today — thought my readers would enjoy this project, too!